PITTSBURGH — A teenager is dead and two people were taken to a hospital Thursday night after a shooting in Pittsburgh’s Knoxville neighborhood, city police confirmed.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed Friday morning that 15-year-old Curtis Pounds was killed.Pittsburgh police said two men were grazed by bullets and taken to UPMC Mercy Hospital for treatment.
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Officers and paramedics were called to the area of Brownsville Road and Moore Avenue around 10:40 p.m.
Witnesses told Channel 11 that they heard a rattle of gunshots and saw three people running from the scene.
Witnesses also told officers that they saw a dark-colored vehicle leave the scene quickly.
Authorities said there is no clear motive or suspects at this time.
Pounds was a ninth-grader at Carrick High School, where grief counselors were available to students Friday.
"He was like, ‘I'm going to be like my cousin when I grow up,’ and he can never grow up,” Pounds aunt, Danielle Williams, said.
Williams said Pounds spent a lot of time at her home and looked up to her three sons.
She said her eldest son plays football at California University of Pennsylvania and Pounds, who recently tried out for his high school football team, had hoped to follow in his footsteps.
"Whatever happened, it's wrong,” she said about the shooting. “The person who goes to jail, their family's going to hurt, too.”
Williams’ said Pounds’ father, Curtis Pounds II, was shot and killed six years ago. But that wasn’t the first time tragedy struck her family.
"My sister got murdered in 1993. My mom only had three of us. We all had three kids, and I'm the only one left,” she said.
Williams said she is numb. Curtis Pounds was her second grandson whom she lost to gun violence.
“It's just a cycle that needs to stop. It needs to stop,” she said.